Random Gifts

So I began the last entry by introducing the idea that I was organizing things. I said that one is music.

It is so.

I am preparing to convert myself to iTunes for a couple of reasons. One is that I am probably going to be the DJ at GHP again this year. My co-DJ last year was in charge of technology, partly because my computer has very little music (and even less LEGIT music) and partly because he rules. The Man has decreed that he will not be returning (I grow older and I question this Man, but I find myself at His mercy and will not yet march into His Office with rhetorical guns blazing until I have disarmed him against myself and my loved ones -- that is to say, I want my job back for one more year, and still want my friend and roommate to have a shot at coming with me!) this year. This is a bummer.

The other reason is I now have an iPod. You well know I would probably never buy one, but also would not be ungrateful to be given one as a gift. So, the Universe gave me one in the fall.

I'm really not kidding. I was taking one of my signature walks and I noticed this thing lying on the sidewalk. I put up signs so its owner might reclaim it. But honestly, it's the oldest form of the cheapest iPod ever made, the Shuffle. New Shuffles are the size of a postage stamp and come in sweet colors. What I have procured looks more like this:

Earphones and all.

But yes, it was free, and yes I am partial to throwing a bunch of music into a bin and letting technology randomize it for me. I thought I lost this little thing in October, and was at peace with that (easy come, easy go). But I found it a few months later under the seat of my car. I took it jogging with me a few weeks ago and kind of liked having it. It certainly saves the trouble of skipping CDs and the like, and is much more compact; mine has a low storage amount (512 MB), compared to later versions, but is still able to hold way more music than any CD.

I am a huge fan of the rough-and-tumble aspect of my fine little iPod. Cast down onto the pavement, having suffered who knows what kind of weather, it could not reasonably have been expected to work anymore. But work it did, and so I am glad of it.

(I am a bit smug about my collection of found and won items, including my grant-laptop, my found-iPod, and my won-Xbox360; this also extends to our furniture, discussed in a previous entry.)